Spotify & blinkbox Music are the best loved Music Apps: Connected Digital

As if the music industry itself isn’t competitive enough, it seems that the music “App” business is equally, if not more competitive. An Apple App Store search for “Music” in the UK app store returns over 36,000 results and a similar search in Google Play will have you trawling through many thousands of music related Android apps before you get to the end of it.

In order to help music lovers work out which of the many thousands of apps are the best, Connected Digital have analysed app reviews from the top Android and Apple apps to identify which service is the greatest. By comparing the volume and percentage of 5 and 1 star reviews Connected Digital were able to create a definitive Top 10 Best Loved Music Apps list.

We can see from the table that Spotify tops the list but blinkbox Music isn’t far behind and when you consider they have the best liked Android app it supports the statement that both Spotify and blinkbox Music are the best loved. What we can also see from the table is that there is a noticeable gap from the 4th placed SoundHound, down to 5th place MTV Trax and that the 2nd,3rd and 4th placed apps are all quite close together in the 67-70% 5 star bracket.

Spotify has significantly more reviews than any of its rivals

Spotify amassed an impressive 223k+ reviews over the course of the last 12 months, more than 600 a day. It’s worth mentioning that most of these reviews come from the Android app, which is a recurring theme for music apps, struggling to break down Apple’s dominance in smartphone music.Apple reviews account for just 7% of total reviews

Android apps get far greater volumes of feedback (read usage!) than their Apple counterparts. This isn’t necessarily surprising but what is shocking is the sheer scale of the issue. With less than 7% of the total reviews from these 10 music apps coming from Apple customers, it’s a damning indictment of competition in the Apple music space.

Tesco may well have made a mistake selling off blinkbox Music

Having sold blinkbox Music to Australian music company Guevera earlier this year, and having had recent success with their Tesco Mobile app, Tesco might have a bit more to shout about in a fortnight of otherwise not so great news had they held onto blinkbox Music. blinkbox Music comes out strongly in a field of ten major players who compete on a global level and they have the best liked Android app out of the list. They don’t have as many reviews as Spotify (few do) but they do have a credible volume of nearly 9k which is more than SoundHound, MTV Trax and Vevo.

Amazon has a really long way to go if it’s going to compete

The Amazon music feedback is perhaps the most surprising insight to come out of this piece of analysis. Second from last by a long way with just a quarter of the volume of 5 star reviews as the 3rd from bottom placed app TuneIn Radio. It doesn’t look like we can rely on Amazon to take on the likes of Apple based on the satisfaction levels of their music app customers.

BBC’s iPlayer Radio app isn’t liked at all

This is possibly stating the obvious given the table above but come on BBC! iPlayer is one of the best services on the internet yet change the app to music service and everything falls apart. Nearly 60% of the reviews of the Apple app are 1 star.

Conclusion

These aren’t all pure streaming apps but if Apple is indeed ploughing ahead with its intention to provide a streaming service then these guys better all watch out. We can see from the poor volume of reviews Apple music apps get, that there is little appetite for a move away from anything Apple provided. We can also see how successful the likes of Spotify and blinkbox are on Android and to a lesser degree on Apple so there is definitely a huge appetite somewhere but perhaps it can only be satiated with something crunchy and sweet!

For more on App Store Optimisation, Reviews Insights or for a full in-depth breakdown of the music apps reviews analysis contact David Copeland on david@connecteddigital.com or +441635597700